Michael Haussler

Gummi Savers

Many ways to count out the hours of a school day

Loudspeakers blare insane talk any time at all

Blowers outside our windows every Tuesday during 1st period

Blowing shit around

Big trucks rumbling and roaring right outside our windows

Every Thursday during 2nd period

My AP class scheduled during Junior High School lunch

above blasting-milk-carton-hurling-screaming children

Who are simply airing themselves out

After a morning sitting in neat rows, in silence

Close the windows on many days and

Temperature skyrockets into the 90’s within moments.

Fire alarm after fire alarm after fire alarm

Assemblies to distribute brightly colored donut shaped wafers

Each with 25 grams of poison

Not to mention the sale to our students of

A tightly wrapped consumer culture

Is our Mission that it is All for Sale?

We fiddle about 

While the state plays games 

With budgets and priorities and masks and shots 

The right plays games with books

The left plays games with correct speech

The books we have are as worn out as the curriculum

The speech we have as tedious as authoritarianism

Elements under tight control the measure of our success

Our classrooms swell and burst

Talking endless talking and talking

Yapping like Fifties admen on TV

Our classes as real-time Pop-Up ads

Our eyes sparkle and glitter

Our mouths water

Our minds melt down at last

Around Gummi Savers.

Important High School Honors History Discussion

Lacey asks why do 7-11s, 

which are open 24 hours a day, 

7 days a week, 

365 days a year, 

have locks on their doors?

Miss Courtney says it’s to keep me out.

Mister Mahoney says that’s the way Americans are 

and it doesn’t matter how we feel it’s the way we approach things 

and that everybody has problems.

Miss Fernandez says it’s because while sliding down the banister of life

we all need a splinter in our ass.

Mister Prescott reminds her that she is ever irrelevant and to please be quieter.

It’s in the spirit of Lincoln’s last speech 

about keeping the door open for all, suggests Ms. Potur.  

Maybe it’s so the attendant can’t relieve himself in peace,

in the spirit of Frederick W. Taylor, offers Miss Bidao.

Maybe it’s so police can secure a crime scene, I offer.

Miss Courtney says No to that and looks at my tie.

Maybe it’s like ties, she points out; the locks are just there, on the necks,

on the doors, which are only bottlenecks anyway.

What do you think?

The Last Hours of the Last Days

These are the last hours of the last days 

As we have known them to be

Our inconstant weather

Is it possible we could have missed it?

Be assured there will be no last-minute Deal made

Someone keeps talking 

Admonishing us as schoolchildren 

We have only ten years to build the lifeboat

Count on it!

That we had better get started

That the climate has caught up to us

The dog has caught the car fersure

But the world leaders are still counting their money

In point of fact

As politicians like to say whenever they lie

We don't actually have ten years

We are long past the point of no return

Future generations will be living and struggling to clean up the mess 

Created by industrialists and capitalists

Perpetuated by nearly all of us as we succumb 

To convenience

To more immediate concerns

Aren’t there always more immediate concerns?

The teacher in Ukraine learning to fight

A new living classroom available to all of her students

For what may be the last hours of the last days of their lives 

The doctor I correspond with in Taiwan

Training to learn how to fight

For what may be the last hours of the last days of his land

Even the guy across the street tricking out a gigantic SUV

Showing off his chrome highlights and big tires

Unconcerned with last hours and last days nonsense 

The barista who daily informs us

She could care less eff em all

You want cream in that Americano?

Where does the last preparation 

Bleed into the last hour of the night?